The Shadow Box: Paranormal Suspense and Dark Fantasy Thriller Novels

by Travis Luedke

  Your son-in-law is on his way over. He’s going to murder your granddaughter unless I can talk him out of it. Yeah, they’ll believe that.

  The door opened with a faint squeal, drowned out by the television blaring in the next room. An audience went into hysterics as David Letterman riffed on the week’s news. I crept across the yellowed linoleum, ears perked, edging toward the open doorway. A tin of cocoa mix sat beside a still-wet spoon. A trail of spilled powder dusted the countertop.

  I rounded the corner and found Amber’s grandparents. Her grandfather slumped on the sofa, his head lolling over the armrest and his arms and legs sprawled at haphazard angles. Her grandmother lay on the carpet between the sofa and the coffee table, unmoving.

  I ran over to them, feeling for a pulse. They were both alive, their breathing shallow, but out cold as I snapped my fingers next to their ears and shook their shoulders. A porcelain cup lay on its side, inches from the grandmother’s outstretched fingers. Spilled cocoa stained the shag carpet. Another cup sat on the end table, half-finished and still warm. I picked it up and gave it a sniff. Chocolate, but something underneath, concealed by the strong scent. Something chemical.

  He drugged them, I thought, picturing it my mind. Tony came by for a visit, offered to make hot chocolate for everyone, then went into the kitchen alone to add a little something special to the drinks. As soon as the narcotics kicked in he’d have the house under his total control, which meant—

  No!

  “Amber!” I shouted as I ran through the house, slamming open doors, not stopping to think or even breathe. “Amber? I’m a friend of your mom’s! If you’re hiding, come out, okay? Amber!”

  I flung open the bathroom door at the end of the hall.

  Amber lay face-down at the bottom of the bathtub. Her golden hair spread out in the water like streamers, like tiny fingers reaching for help that never came.

  31.

  Water spots smeared the wallpaper. Puddles pooled on the cold tile floor. Even drugged, she’d fought him. I plunged my arms into the lukewarm water and hauled her out. Water drenched my clothes, but I couldn’t feel it, couldn’t even think. I laid her out on the floor, on her back. Her limp hand slapped against the tile. No pulse. I felt her blue lips, her clammy skin, frantic. I’d taken a CPR class years ago, but everything I’d learned was just a mishmash of half-remembered facts. I tried compressions, my hands engulfing her tiny chest as I pressed down against her rib cage, counting, breathing into her lifeless mouth. I knew even before I started that it was a lost cause.

  I caressed the little girl’s cheek.

  “I’m so sorry,” I whispered, and left her dead on the bathroom floor.

  I shut the door and stood in the hallway, feeling the world quietly fall apart. I took a slow, deep breath.

  “Fuck!” I screamed, slamming my fist into the wall. A mirror hung at the end of the hallway. I tore it down, threw it to the carpet, and stomped it again and again, glass shattering under my heel, just for the sake of breaking something.

  Monsters are real. I’d known that since I was a child. Every day people abuse, hurt, and kill each other for the pettiest of reasons. Somebody gets blown away for a pair of shoes or a new iPod and I just shrug. But Tony Vance murdered his own daughter. He took an innocent eight-year-old girl, drowned her in a bathtub, and sucked out her soul. For what? What could possibly justify that kind of evil? What reward was worth a ticket price that steep?

  Lauren Carmichael and her inner circle had to be stopped. Tonight, though, I only had one name on my list. Only one face filled my mind’s eye as I walked out of that house of horrors with ice water flooding my veins. Tony Vance was going to answer for what he’d done. Not to the cops, not to God.

  He was going to answer to me.

  #

  The lights of the Vegas Strip blazed. Any other night they would have put a smile on my face. Tonight, I only had one destination. One target. I concentrated on the slow-moving traffic, my focus sharp as a diamond scalpel.

  I knew Tony, or at least I thought I did. He’d possessed just enough humanity to resist joining the others in their bloodthirsty fun, but not enough to walk away. He’d be feeling it now, in the aftermath of the kill. Feeling the weight. Where does an award-winning architect go to reflect and be alone after murdering his daughter? I wasn’t certain, but I had a pretty good hunch.

  The skeleton of the Enclave stood at the far south end of Las Vegas Boulevard, a mammoth spire of girders and rebar surrounded by a chain link barricade. A cheerful painting plastered to the fence showed an artist’s rendition of the finished resort, standing proud under a blue sky as an eager father, his daughter riding on his shoulders, pointed the way to the front doors.

  “A New Adventure. A New Las Vegas. The Enclave. Coming Soon.”

  A construction gate hung open, an open padlock dangling lazily from a length of chain. Next to the foreman’s trailer, in a patch of asphalt littered with bundled rebar and pyramids of steel girders, a black Lexus sat empty. I parked behind it. I strode across the construction site, not bothering to mask my footsteps. I wanted Tony to know I was coming for him.

  The open cage of a temporary elevator waited for me, lit by a dangling bulb. The cage whirred as it jerked to life at the press of a button, lurching upward, the ground falling away. Ten stories up, twenty, thirty, the traffic on the Strip just a smear of yellow light below. A gust of wind rattled the cage. Gears clanked in the dark.

  The elevator ground to a halt on the thirty-sixth floor. End of the line.

  Girders speared the open sky. A chill breeze ruffled my hair as I stepped onto bare concrete, the floor marked with splats of white spray-paint—arrows and lines in the secret language of engineers. Fresh barricades of drywall marked the odd room or hallway, but most of the floor was a blank slate waiting to be filled in. A scattering of tools lay out on gallon drums and makeshift sawhorse tables, waiting for tomorrow’s shift.

  I found Tony at the tower’s edge, staring out over the Vegas night. He clutched a fat bottle in his hand, leaning with his other palm pressed against a standing girder.

  “I knew you’d find me,” he said, not turning around.

  I stood about five feet back, a ghost in the shadows. I didn’t say anything. I didn’t have the words.

  “I must have showed up maybe three minutes after you called Jill’s folks,” he said. “They told me about the break-in. Then they said you’d asked about Amber, and I knew it was you. I just knew. You never would have made it in time, if that’s any consolation.”

  I watched him. Motionless. Something ugly and black burned in the pit of my stomach, like a monster pacing in a thin-barred cage.

  “If you’re looking for the soul-trap, you’re too late. Already gave it to Lauren.” He looked at the bottle in his hand, shook his head, and tossed back a swig. “She handed me this. Veuve Clicquot Yellow Label. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a good fuckin’ champagne, thirty-five hundred a bottle, but…yeah, that’s our Lauren. It came wrapped with a little bow. Good dog. Here’s your bone.”

  I found my voice.

  “Why did you do it?”

  He turned to face me. Tears glistened on his cheeks.

  “The lockmaker,” he said, “was clever. You need five souls to open the Box. Five sacrifices. The trick is, they have to be someone you love. Someone you truly, genuinely love. We found a loophole, though. One person doesn’t have to take all that pain. We split it up between the four of us.”

  He choked up for a second. I waited. Patient.

  “Let me tell you a story about Lauren Carmichael,” he said. “Maybe twenty years ago, she starts hunting for the Box. She knew the cost. So what does she do? She goes out and starts dating. Finds the man of her dreams. Raises a happy, healthy son. Genuinely loved them. Devoted wife, loving mom. All the while, all those years, knowing that one day she’d butcher them both to get what she wants. That’s just the kind of person she is. How can you fight someone like that?”

&nbs
p; I took a step toward him.

  “Tell me why.”

  Tony shook his head. “Do you believe that the end justifies the means?”

  “Depends on the end.”

  “Hypothetical question.” He sucked down another pull from the bottle. “A time traveler tells you that a random stranger is destined to start World War III. Boom, nukes drop, end of the human race. He puts a gun in your hand and says the only way to stop it is to shoot the poor bastard dead. What do you do?”

  “You murdered your daughter,” I said, my voice flat. “Don’t waste my time with—”

  He waved a hand, interrupting me. “Let’s expand it. Let’s say the only way to stop the bombs is to wipe out a classroom full of kindergartners. Thirty rosy-cheeked little cherubs against the survival of everyone on Earth. Do you do it? I mean, you’d be immoral not to do it, wouldn’t you?”

  “Real life is never that simple.” I clenched my fists. “There’s always another way. Another choice. A better choice than some stupid, made-up ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t’ mind game.”

  “You think so?” Tony asked, waggling the champagne bottle. “See, you don’t get it. You don’t understand what’s happening here. The world’s dying, Faust. We’re killing each other, killing the planet, and it won’t stop until the human race wipes itself out or somebody makes it stop. That’s Lauren’s plan. We’re going to save humanity from itself. We’re going to make things right. See, we’re the good guys. You’re the bad guy.”

  “You murdered your daughter,” I said. “You drowned her in a bathtub—”

  “I made hard decisions!” he roared. He squeezed his eyes shut, shaking his head. When he spoke again, his voice was faint. Broken. “The things we’ve done, Faust. Christ, the things we’re going to do. If you knew the entire plan, the scope of it, you’d never sleep again. It’s all for the greater good, though. When our work is done, we’ll be heroes. Legends. We’re going to save the world.”

  He offered me the bottle. I just stared at him and imagined what my fingers might feel like clenched around his throat. He shrugged and drank some more.

  “It’s only right,” he said. “All the sacrifice we’re demanding of others, how could I not bear part of the pain? What I did tonight…it was monstrous. I know that. Unforgivable. But it was necessary.”

  “And what happens when Amber’s grandparents wake up? Do you really think you’re going to get away with this?”

  “They’re in a Rohypnol dreamland. Good chance of memory loss. Might not even remember I was there. If they do, well, worst-case scenario is I get picked up for questioning. New moon’s in two days. After that, nothing matters. That’s why we had Holt running interference for us with the police. We didn’t need to bury the murder investigations forever. We just needed to stall them until our work is done.”

  Tony leaned his head back and tilted the champagne bottle, draining the last drops like it was a can of cheap beer. He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth.

  “You don’t get it,” he said. “You can’t stop Lauren Carmichael. Anything you might do, anything you might throw at her, she already prepared for years ago. Back in college, she went on this expedition to India. Came back with a plan to save the world.”

  I remembered what Nicky’s fear-deranged seer had babbled, right before the gunshot. She went to India. She went to India, but it wasn’t her who came back.

  “She’s got wheels turning inside wheels,” Tony said, “and everything’s a part of her master plan. Anything that doesn’t fit, she annihilates. You can’t beat her.”

  “You’re forgetting something,” I told him.

  “Yeah?”

  “She already tried to kill me once. I’m still standing.”

  Tony sighed, leaning against a standing girder. A gust of wind rippled through the skeletal tower. A car horn blared far below, somewhere in the neon mists.

  He looked at me. “You’re not gonna be reasonable about this, are you?”

  “I’m feeling pretty unreasonable tonight.”

  “We can make you rich,” he said. “Power, sex, drugs, anything you want, name it. All you have to do is stay out of our way. Easiest job you’ve ever had.”

  “Here’s my counteroffer. You go to the cops, confess to killing your daughter, and ride the consequences.”

  “You know that’s not gonna happen.”

  I shrugged. “You won’t like the alternative.”

  “Huh,” Tony said, and then he threw the bottle at me.

  I turned my shoulder and it bounced off, hit the concrete, and shattered. The distraction bought him the second he needed to rush for a plank set up between a pair of sawhorses. His flailing arm knocked aside an abandoned hard hat, and he snatched up a circular saw.

  He turned to face me, clutching the cordless saw in his hands like a battle-ax. The machine whined to life, the blade’s teeth spinning into a lethal blur, and he moved in for the kill.

  32.

  Tony charged at me, swinging the screaming saw with long, heavy sweeps. I jumped back once, twice, looking for something to give me an edge. A toolbox, heavy and pitted with age, sat in the shadow of a stack of drywall. I dodged to the right and went for it. The second I did, I knew I’d misjudged the distance. Tony lunged and the saw blade glanced against my forearm, chewing fabric and skin and spattering his face with my blood.

  With my teeth gritted against the sudden, searing pain I stumbled out of his reach, sweeping up the heavy toolbox by the handle. I turned just as he made another charge; then I brought up the box and slammed it against the blade. White-hot sparks flew, and the saw screamed. The recoil sent Tony staggering back a step. Before he could recover I ran in swinging and smashed the toolbox against the side of his head.

  He reeled back. The saw flew from his grip and skidded across the bare concrete. He teetered toward the building’s edge. His face was a bloody mask of terror as he went over the side and caught the ledge at the last second. He dangled from the tower’s lip, his legs kicking helplessly.

  I dropped the toolbox. Crimson rivulets ran down my arm to the fingertips, the pain almost blinding. I gathered together the torn fabric as best I could and pressed it to the cut. It wasn’t that deep—he hadn’t sliced into muscle or bone—but it bled like a slaughtered sheep.

  “Help,” Tony gasped. He clung to the side of the building, one hand and one forearm upon the ledge. “Please, gimme your hand, pull me up.”

  I stood over him, watching, but all I could see now was a little girl dead in a bathtub.

  “I’ll turn myself in!” he cried, slowly losing his grip. “C’mon, man! I swear it. You can walk me right to the cops! I’ll tell them everything! I’ll expose Lauren!”

  “That offer expired,” I told him.

  His forearm slipped. He caught the ledge with his hand. He looked up at me, eyes wet with tears, pleading.

  “Please,” he begged, “c’mon, you know I’m worth more alive than dead. I can help you! I can help you! Please, please, I don’t wanna die, I don’t wanna fucking die—”

  I felt strangely calm. I was realizing something about myself, and I felt okay with it.

  “You were right about one thing,” I said softly. “See, I fooled myself. Thought I was some crusading hero for a while there. But that’s not who I am at all, is it?”

  Tony looked up at me, mouth agape. His fingers, white from the pressure, began to slip.

  “I’m the bad guy,” I told him, and kicked his fingers away.

  Tony screamed as he fell. I stood at the Enclave’s edge and watched him go. His flailing arms waved the way down to the pavement. Just another long goodbye.

  I found a couple of dirty rags among the construction equipment and knotted them around my forearm. They kept the bleeding under control. The elevator seemed slower doing down than it had going up. The sky felt colder. I got off on the ground floor, stepped around the broken remains of Tony Vance, and got into my car.

  I didn’t move fo
r a while. It wasn’t that I felt bad about killing him. I didn’t feel bad at all. That’s what scared me.

  I took out my phone. Caitlin answered on the third ring.

  “Yes?”

  “Can I come over?” I asked, then listened to the sound of her breath as she made up her mind.

  “Yes.”

  #

  I didn’t have far to travel. The address she gave me was just a few blocks up the Strip, a penthouse apartment in the Taipei Tower. I ignored the looks I got in the lobby, trudging across a chrysanthemum-patterned carpet as red as the tattered rags on my arm. A sharp-eyed man in a black suit made a beeline for me, and I braced for an argument.

  “Sir—” he started to say.

  “I know, I’m bringing down real estate values. Don’t worry, I’m just passing through.”

  “Exactly, sir,” he said, gesturing toward an elevator bank down a short hallway. “Miss Brody is expecting you. You’ll want to take the express elevator up to fifty-six. It’s already unlocked and keyed for you.”

  She stood in her doorway at the top of the world, dressed in a pencil skirt and a fluffy gray sweater that fell off one pale shoulder. I stood in front of her like a supplicant at the temple gate, looking for something to say.

  “I think I’m broken,” I told her.

  “I’ll open a bottle of wine,” she said and took me by the hand.

  Caitlin marked her territory with decor from an ’80s music video. Track lighting cast spotlights across hardwood floors and museum-white walls, with fixtures in chrome and stainless steel. She sat me down in a plush black leather sofa under the watchful eye of a Nagel painting as she slipped into the kitchen. She came back with a bottle of merlot and two glasses.

  “I killed a man tonight,” I said while she poured.